The Brilliant Boy Billionaire - 81. The Devil’s in the Details

It felt like my head had barely hit the pillow when Alesia started ranting from a display on the night table, ‘Three unknown individuals are at the main gait.’ Noticing that the time on the display was only 7:38 AM, I said aloud, “What the fuck is someone doing at the main gait at 7:40 in the fuckin’ morning?”

The sound of a laugh from the doorway alerted me that Randy had been awakened, too. Our son was staying in the adjacent bedroom, one of three guest bedrooms on the upper level in the front of the house. The other three bedrooms, including the master bedroom, were located on the lower level and in the back of the house, right off the pool deck. “Come on in, Randy,” I called out, and our son entered and sat down on the bed next to me. He was dressed in his usual sleeping attire, as were Henry and I, which was to say, all three of us were in the nude.

Alesia again made her announcement, so I responded with the command, “Alesia, open communication with the main gait.” That brought up video feed from a trio of cameras revealing three people inside a large white van, parked at the entrance to the main gait of the Moorthy complex. The Fox News logo was prominently displayed on the side of the van.

“You have a lot of gall, coming around here this early when the family’s in mourning,” I practically shouted into the device. “We got in late and were up most of the night, as it was.”

“Good morning, Dr. Jeffries,” the woman in the driver’s seat began as she leaned out the window.“Wendy Simon with Fox News.” I had to give her credit. She’d either made an educated guess or more likely tracked us down from our flight information. She’d done her homework. “Would it be too much to ask for you to let us in and grant us an interview?”

“Way too much to ask,” I replied.

“Can you comment on the cause of death of Dr. Moorthy?”

“Wendy Simon from Fox News,” Henry called out from the other side of the bed, “as I’m sure you already know, we just got here late last night and by the time we finished talking with his children and their friends, we got to bed just a few hours ago. Not even. I’m certain you know more about the cause of death than do we.”

“Is there any truth to the rumors that you expect to have a bitter custody battle with Dr. Moorthy’s relatives in India regarding the children and the fate of his vast fortune?”

“You know that I can’t comment on something like that,” I replied. “There hasn’t even been a funeral yet, let alone the reading of the will. We’re here because Dr. Moorthy was one of my closest, dearest friends. Jitendra Moorthy’s children need us now. It’s devastating to lose a parent at such a young age, as Enrique and I know all too well. Dr. Moorthy’s kids have lost both their parents. Eleven years ago, Enrique and I made a commitment to serve as guardians to his children in the event of his passing. Assuming the will hasn’t changed, we’ll be honored to serve in that capacity. I have nothing more to say at this time.”

“If you end up with guardianship of his children, do you expect to gain control of his vast fortune?” God, I couldn’t believe that the information had been leaked to the press already.

“I should think it would be obvious from the way we dealt with our own fortune that we have no need for or interest in his wealth,” I replied. “Our only interest is in protecting his children’s interests from those who would seek to undermine them for their own personal gain. Anything more than that will have to wait for the reading of the will.”

“Will Dr. Moorthy be cremated?” the news reporter asked.

“I’ve no idea. You might try asking the funeral home about that one,” I suggested.

“Thank you very much, Dr. Jeffries,” she responded.

“I’d say the pleasure’s mine,” I replied, “but there’s nothing pleasurable about being wakened when you’re jet-lagged and have had less than three hours of sleep.”

With that, the van backed up, turned around and left.

“That was probably only the first of a stream of news outlets that will show up on our doorstep today,” Henry pointed out. “We’d better hire security to intercept anyone who might attempt to get past the gait and come up the hill.”

“I’ll text Winston to see if Jitendra had a contract with a security company,” I responded as I did so. “We probably won’t hear back from him until he gets up, though. Otherwise, we’ll hire the local branch of the firm we use.” I heard a chirp and looked at the reply to my text. “Winston’s going to contact the firm Jitendra used and make the arrangements. I guess he was already up, or I woke the poor guy up.”

“It’s just as well, either way. The sooner the better,” Henry replied. “Fucking media.” The laugh from our son reminded me we weren’t alone.

“Okay, we’re awake, and there’s a lot to do today, so we might as well stay up and get it done,” I barked. “Randy, why don’t you get some breakfast going for everyone? Do you think you can do that?”

“Yeah, sure, Dads,” he responded as he walked out the door and headed in the direction of the kitchen. I started to call out to remind him that he was nude and that there was a girl in the house but then thought better of it. Randy had no modesty, and the reminder would only embolden him. It’d be better to let him remember it on his own.

“How much do you think Jitendra’s estate is worth?” Henry asked as we walked into the en-suite bathroom and prepared to shower.

Shrugging my shoulders, I replied, “it’s hard to know for sure since most of it’s tied up in Pegasus stock. I’ve heard it’s over a trillion dollars.” I looked up the market valuation of the company online, and when I told Henry, he whistled.

“I didn’t realize Pegasus was anywhere near being in the multitrillion-dollar club.” Henry exclaimed. “Jitendra certainly landed on his feet. He’s about the only one who actually profited from the Big Tech Breakup. If it weren’t for his stock being split three ways with his kids, he’d have been the richest person on earth.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re right.”

“Aside from the company, how much do you think he was worth on paper?” Henry asked as he adjusted the water temperature and stepped into the shower while I put my phone aside and began to shave.

“I would guess this house and property alone have got to be worth a quarter billion – maybe more. He owns the whole mountaintop, but it’s undoubtedly held by a shell corporation to avoid paying taxes. Jitendra was the one who taught me about shell corporations.”

“And he left his shares in that shell corporation to us as well as whatever else he has stashed away.”

“Not to mention a nine- or ten-figure life-insurance policy,” I added, “and that’s the one thing his family can’t go after.”

“Good point,” Henry agreed. “Even if the family manages to get control of Pegasus, the kids can still get a good start on life from that alone. We just have to see to it that they never get custody of the kids.”

“That’s truly the only thing that matters,” I chimed in. “We’re in pretty good shape to take care of the kids on our own if we have to, regardless of what happens with the family. We did pretty well for ourselves, all things considered, but only because we used our shares in Applazon to buy out all the patents before the Big Tech Breakup and before Washington had a chance to get their hands on them. With the patents held by a nonprofit corporation, there was no justification for the Federal government usurping them in the public interest.”

“Yeah, that was a prescient move on our part,” Henry agreed. When it came to the Big Tech Breakup, you were pretty much right about everything. Jeff Barlow really took a bath.”

“He still hasn’t recouped his losses and probably never will. The healthcare debacle blew up in his face, just as I said it would. Everything that was left of his eCommerce empire was split into little bitty pieces. I think that’s probably a good part of the reason he’s shifted his emphasis to Boeing and his endeavors in space. It was tough going for a while with all the hot water Boeing was in, though. The buyback program seemed like a good idea until his losses at Applazon caused his net worth to dry up.”

“Boeing sure seems to be doing well now,” Henry commented, “particularly since they got FAA approval for the rechargeable retrofits and the supersonic designs. New Origins seems to be doing well too. I've certainly seen enough ads for his space tourism flights.”

“I expect Boeing may hit a bit of a snag when the first transcontinental bullet train is finished, but the demand for supersonic aircraft is so strong worldwide that it might not even matter, and the rotorless helicopters have driven the stock to record highs, pun intended. The word on the street, however, is that New Origins may be decades away from making a profit. I hear they lose millions on each tourism flight, in spite of the seven-figure price tag for the basic ‘Threshold of Space’ trip. He’s well on his way to catching up with Elon Musk’s Space-X when it comes to commercial manned flight, though. We may even get involved in his plans for building space elevators.”

“How can we justify that when it’s a product that’ll be commercially viable?” Henry asked as we switched places.

“The benefit of making orbital transport cost-effective far outweighs that from the for-profit sector,” I countered. “There are certain types of products that can only be manufactured in microgravity, yet the startup costs are so high that they’ll never see the light of day otherwise. Besides which, the cost of a permanent set of space elevators would be much more than Jeff has suggested. Left to his own devices, Jeff will settle for building tethers, which are quick and dirty, and ecologically dangerous. A space ring and equatorial elevators would be much safer, and it would provide for the infrastructure on which to build a permanent presence in space, but building it wouldn’t be cheap.”

The idea behind space elevators was simple enough, but startup costs were prohibitive. Using rockets to lift payloads into space involved lifting not only the weight of the payload, but the weight of the rockets, the rocket engines and the rocket fuel. Significantly more energy was expended to lift the rocket fuel than the payload. Elevators, however, used pulleys, counterweights and fixed motors, and since most payloads ultimately returned to earth, the energy needed to lift one payload could be offset by the energy gained in lowering another. However, reaching even just the threshold of space would require an elevator shaft sixty miles tall, or about 100 kilometers, which was two hundred times the height of our wind turbines and ten times the thickness of the earth’s crust. A number of kilometer-tall skyscrapers were under construction around the world, making use of our carbon silicate technology, but even a catastrophic failure of one would have limited impact outside of the immediate area.

At least with ceramic foam, an elevator cable could support its own weight, but the earth’s crust wasn’t strong enough to support a structure of that height without resorting to untested technologies that posed the risk of ending in disaster. The structural failure of a hundred-kilometer space elevator might well leave a gaping hole in its wake, resulting in an extinction-level supervolcano. A space tether, consisting of a cable-pulley system mounted on a geosynchronous platform, would be much simpler and cheaper to build. However, if the cable ever snapped, it would fall back to earth and literally wrap itself around the equator, potentially cutting earth’s crust in half. That too could result in an extinction-level event. Such a catastrophe was depicted quite nicely in Applazon’s TV serialization of Isaac Asimov’s seminal Foundation series.

A rigid equatorial space ring would provide much better stability than an orbital platform, and it could be built at considerably lower altitudes than needed for geosynchronous orbit – at orders of magnitude greater cost. The minimum diameter to avoid appreciable atmospheric drag would be 8,500 miles, just 250 miles above the earth's surface, but a 15,500-mile, 25,000-kilometer-diameter ring would allow room for the near-earth orbital satellites used in tactical surveillance and meteorology. Although costlier to build, a space ring would provide the infrastructure on which to build factories, hospitals and hotels, all utilizing solar power. However, with an initial cost in the trillions of dollars, it would never be built without solid proof of concept.

It was thus that Henry replied, “If you can find enough raw materials to mine in space. With the way everyone on earth has been building infrastructure, there’s not going to be enough ceramic foam left to build in space.”

“We’ll mine the moon if we have to,” I suggested, much to Henry’s surprise. “I have a design that relies on a thin but sturdy carbon silicate backbone, using a tiny fraction of the moon’s total mass.”

“Even if it’s only a few atoms thick, the mass won’t be trivial. Let me model the effects of extracting a tiny fraction of mass from the moon, okay?” Henry asked. “It might not affect orbital mechanics, but the effects on earth’s tides could be unpredictable. There’s also the effect it could have on the rotation of earth’s core. Disrupt that and you disrupt all life on earth.”

Cringing, I replied, “Point well taken. Perhaps it’d be better to wait until we have robots that can retrieve small asteroids from the asteroid belt.”

“That would be my vote,” Henry agreed. “Hopefully, by the time we have those capabilities, we’ll have solved the problems with space debris, low-orbital satellites and how to accommodate continental drift.”

Getting out of the shower and drying myself off, I changed the subject and said, “Tim Cooper also did okay. He was the only one with the sense to follow my lead and split off the consumer-electronics branch before the Feds got their hands on it. The only concession he had to make was to open the hardware up to third-party software. He still managed to protect user security by sandboxing all the loaded software. He baked it into the hardware.” Sandboxing was a technique used to restrict applications to run in in individual ‘sandboxes’ in which they alone could play. That prevented malware from overwriting other software elements, including the operating system. Developers complained about the lack of access to data, but the hardware from Cupertino was approved for use in sensitive government installations. No other hardware could meet that standard.

“Would Tim be worth considering to take on Pegasus?” Henry asked. “Rumor has it he’s retiring next year anyway, so it would be the perfect project for him.”

“Tim has very little of his own money invested in it,” I countered. “His net worth’s reportedly only just over a billion. Of course he’s worth considerably more, but most of it’s on paper.”

“Pocket change in the corporate arena.”

“Applazon Cloud Resources might have survived intact if Jeff had split it into smaller independent companies in the first place,” I continued as we moved into the bedroom to get dressed. “At least, Jitendra had the sense to go after the remnants obliquely. Back then, he never could have afforded to buy all those servers outright, so he let others buy them; instead, he built a platform for aggregating servers across multiple domains, and then he built an eCommerce website that pulled together all of the remnants of eCommerce from across the web. It was brilliant.”

“It made him a very rich man,” Henry agreed. “In the meantime, Andy bought up as many of the ACR data centers in the Americas as he could afford.” He did it all under the radar, but his servers now handled perhaps a third of Pegasus’ internet traffic worldwide. He still called his company ACR, although the acronym’s meaningless now… or perhaps the A stands for Andy. In effect, Andy actually owned the hardware, while Jitendra got all the credit for renting it.

“It actually makes sense for Andy to do a stock swap with Pegasus,” Henry continued. “He might not be in the spotlight nor have the market valuation, but he has actual assets to bring to the table, particularly when it comes to the Gannet media empire. Winston’s idea for using it and the Herald as a poison pill to keep Jitendra’s family in India from getting their hands on Pegasus is absolutely brilliant.”

“Andy would make a great CEO, too,” I added as an afterthought.

“That’s a serious consideration, especially now that we know Carolyn is the acting CEO and doesn’t want the job, but we need to find out who’s already in the organization,” Henry said and then added, “Let’s go see if breakfast is ready.” Wearing polos and khakis, which now dominated our casual attire rather than the shorts without shirts we wore in our teens, we headed to the kitchen, where Randy was putting the finishing touches on quite a spread of food. He definitely had picked up Henry’s flare for cooking; I certainly didn’t have those skills myself.

“That smells wonderful,” Henry agreed as we entered the kitchen just as four hungry teenagers made their way upstairs, too, in various states of dress. Randy was still naked, yet no one commented on it, not even Trina. However, apparently Henry felt compelled to ask, “Randy, don’t you think you should get dressed?”

“Didn’t you say you used to go nude around your sisters all the time?”

“We were a military family in military housing,” Henry responded. “There wasn’t much room, and there were nine of us, so close encounters without clothing were unavoidable, but they didn’t happen ‘all the time’. I was quite a bit younger than you back then, too. There wasn’t as much to see.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m well-endowed, so I should cover it up,” Randy replied. “Jeez.”

“I have no problem with Randy going around naked,” Trina added. “It’s not like it matters. He’s gay, after all, and I have my own boyfriend, and I see him naked all the time, and if we’re gonna talk about well-endowed…”

“Oh, my god,” Jayden responded as he covered his face with his hands. Even with his mocha-colored skin, I could tell he was blushing furiously.

“Trina can look all she wants, and it won’t matter to me. Does anyone care whether or not I get dressed for breakfast?” Hearing no responses, he responded, “I didn’t think so.

“I’ve made huevos rancheros, American fries with peppers and onions, rye toast with assorted spreads, Impossible bacon, Beyond Meat sausage, orange juice and coffee. Help yourselves!”

“I can’t believe you put all this together in, what, fifteen minutes?” I commented as I grabbed a plate.

“More like twenty, Dad. You guys are getting slower in your old age,” he joked.

“I’ll let that pass this time,” I responded. “I don’t feel like attacking a poor naked child.”

“Touché,” Henry chimed in.

Filling up our plates, we made our way to the breakfast nook off the kitchen and sat down with the kids as Randy joined us. We all wasted no time devouring the food that Randy had prepared. Henry and I both had peanut butter on our rye toast. The coffee tasted like Deadman’s Reach and likely was, since I’d introduced Jitendra to it myself, and it was roasted right in Washington State. Everything was delicious.

As we were finishing up, Randy asked, “I couldn’t help but hear you mention that Dr. Moorthy asked you guys to be guardians of his kids. Does that mean they’ll be moving in with us?”

“Jeez, I was just trying to get that reporter off my back,” I replied. “Yes, Jitendra asked Henry and me to be his children’s guardians if anything happened to him.” Then turning to look directly at William and Trina, “The last thing I want to do is to uproot you from your lives, but there may not be a choice in the matter. Winston filled me in on what had been going on with your family in India. Your father was justifiably concerned.”

“Billy, what’s he talking about?” Lyle Jr. asked.

“Billy?” Randy asked with a laugh.

“Don’t call me that,” William replied. “My boyfriend’s the only one allowed to call me Billy. Just…don’t.”

“It’s complicated,” William faced his boyfriend and replied. “Apparently, the family expects me to carry on the family name and bloodline. I can’t do that if I’m gay. They’re insisting on an arranged marriage in India with a girl of their choosing. They want me to live in India.”

“That’s nuts!” Lyle replied. “They can’t take you out of the country. Not against your will. That would be kidnapping.”

“Now that I’m sixteen, they want to promise me to an Indian boy,” Trina related. “They want me to get married and start giving them babies right away.”

“They only want to get their hands on the money,” Jayden added. “It’s all about the money.”

“But Trina and Billy are American citizens!” Lyle Jr. cried out. “Surely CPS won’t let them be taken out of the country.”

“It’s complicated,” I admitted. “The principle of granting citizenship to anyone born here is uniquely American. It doesn’t work that way in other countries. India recognizes citizenship based on the nationality of the parents, and with one Indian parent, they’re likely to grant Indian citizenship to the children in the absence of an American family. With citizenship, they can get Indian passports, and then the family can get an emergency visa to repatriate Indian children of a deceased Indian parent. The only way to fight them is if there’s an American guardian requested by the deceased parent and to go to family court to grant guardianship to that person. Then if the children are old enough to request to stay in America, which you certainly are, the courts will prohibit the family from taking the children out of the country.”

“So, Dad requested that you guys be our guardians?” William asked. “That’s fantastic. Then they can’t touch us.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods,” I explained. “I spent a lot of time on the phone early this morning with my pop, who’s a Federal District Court judge. He filled me in on all the details and risks, and he gave us the name of an attorney here in Seattle who specializes in international family law. Apparently he’s one of the best. I’ll be contacting his office today as soon as they open.

“The first hurdle we have to deal with is the fact that Henry and I live in New York. States generally don’t grant guardianship to people from out of state because they lose jurisdiction in the process. If necessary, we’ll buy property in Washington State and move our legal residence here until we can adopt you. Under the circumstances, however, the state will likely grant an emergency request for guardianship anyway because of the risk that you’d be taken out of the country against your will.”

“But won’t that mean you’ll be taking Billy back to New York? You’ll be separating us?” Lyle Jr. asked.

“New York is a hell of a lot closer to Seattle than fucking New Delhi,” Jayden countered. “I don’t want to lose Trina, either, but at least there’s still a chance we can get back together for college. If her grandparents take her back to India, I’ll probably never see her again. Hell, she’ll be married to some Indian boy.”

“There’s still some risk, guys,” I interjected. “Even with guardianship, the family will still be able to get Indian passports for you. If they ever get you alone, there’d be nothing to stop them from kidnapping you and spiriting you out of the country. If we know in time, we can get a court-ordered injunction and literally stop the airlines from letting you board any flight out of the U.S., but if they grabbed you when Henry and I were out of town on business and didn’t know about it, by the time we or anyone we designated could act, you might already be on your way to India.”

“Can we bribe them?” Jayden asked. “After all, it’s only the money they really want.”

Nodding my head, I replied, “That’s one option. I’m not sure how much your father was worth, but like most people of means, he undoubtedly used a complex web of corporations to avoid paying taxes.”

“Are you serious?” Trina asked.

Chuckling, I replied, “Your father was the one who taught me how to do it. It’s not fair to everyone else, and in my opinion, it’s immoral, but so long as those of means are able to participate in writing the tax code or in influencing those who do, people will take advantage of it. Did you know that the two of you each own twenty percent of Pegasus?”

“Yeah, Dad told us about that,” Will admitted, “but he said it wouldn’t really be ours until we turn thirty, so it’s not like we own it.”

“Actually, you do in every sense of the word,” I explained, “but it’s tied up in a trust until you’re thirty. That money is yours and you’ll get full control of it when you’re thirty, but your father, as the trustee, retained control of it and, with his own twenty-percent share, retained full control of the company.”

“So, what happens to the trust now that Dad’s gone?” Will asked. “What about Dad’s twenty percent?” I then explained what Henry and I had learned from Winston in the early-morning hours, including about how the family would likely challenge the will or even try to submit their own fake will.

“They can have all of it,” William responded. “No way, no how, am I going to fucking India.”

“Same for me,” Trina agreed. “If it comes down to it, they can have it all.”

“That’s probably not an option,” I interjected. “You can’t just give away hundreds of billions worth of stock. The Securities and Exchange Commission would almost certainly investigate, and it’s doubtful they’d allow such a stock transfer. It’s up to them to protect the interests of all the shareholders and not just the family. There’s also the fact that you’re minors, and the law requires that your interests be protected from adults who would take advantage of you, even if they are your parents or have guardianship over you.”

“Couldn’t the courts, like, emancipate us?” Will asked.

“At sixteen, they could certainly emancipate your sister, and under the circumstances, it’s likely they’d agree with emancipating you as well, but then you’d face the full wrath of your Indian family as adults, without any of the protections you enjoy as kids. Your trusts would remain in effect until you’re thirty and you can be sure your family would still try to get control as the trustees. Emancipated or not, they could abduct you under your Indian passports. There’d be other consequences as well. For example, as an adult, you couldn’t legally have sex with your boyfriend, who’s a minor.”

“Screw that,” Will replied, getting a laugh from all of us because of the double meaning.

“What about things like the house, our college funds and so on?” Trina suggested. “Could we give the family everything else we own to get them to go away? Would you still be able to be our guardians if we don’t have any money?”

“One thing you and Will don’t have to worry about is whether or not we can afford to take care of you. We may have used most of our assets to establish a private, nonprofit foundation, but in doing so, we set it up such that we get a stipend for each child we take in, without any limitations. I don’t think it’ll come to that, but if Henry and I adopt you, you’ll be entitled to full tuition at any school in the world, including for graduate and professional degrees, plus enough money to start your own business or to get started in the career of your choice. It won’t be enough to live lavishly, but it’ll be enough that you can choose your profession without regard to financial issues.

“You can afford to give up your inheritance, but you need to understand that it’s a pittance compared to the value of the Pegasus stock. It’s unlikely your family in India would be satisfied with a few billion dollars in assets compared to control of a multitrillion-dollar company. We can make an offer, but I wouldn’t expect much.”

“Try it, anyway,” William insisted.

“Why don’t you wait to hear what Henry and I have come up with as a counter to the family’s efforts?” I went on to explain our thoughts with respect to bringing in trusted investors and using stock swaps to acquire Gannet and the Washington Herald, diminishing the their share of an overall larger corporation, but not enough for them to lose control of Pegasus. “There are risks, to be sure, but it would effectively keep your father’s family from gaining control. They’d find themselves tied up in court for years if they tried, by which time you might very well be old enough to get control of the trusts yourselves.”

“It sounds like a plan,” William interjected.

“If Trina and William come to live with us, where will they sleep?” Randy asked. “You can’t exactly expect all five boys to share a bedroom so that Trina can have a room to herself.”

“We’d set up a temporary bedroom for Trina in the home office, and we’d add a bed for William in your bedroom for now. I think it might be problematic for anyone to share a bedroom with the twins. In the meantime, as you pointed out, we’ll make an offer on the penthouse in our building. We already set that in motion, and I expect we’ll be able to close on it fairly quickly – for New York, anyway. We wouldn’t move in right away, though, as we’d need to do some extensive renovations first and then buy all new furniture. We know of some of the best interior decorators in the world through Henry’s position on the board of the Rubin Museum. As soon as we have a contract, we’ll get going with making all the arrangements.”

“The doorbell chimed, and Alesia announced that Winston was at the door.

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“They what?” I exclaimed in disbelief.

“Jitendra’s parents, brothers and sisters filed a request for an emergency injunction with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington,” Winston reiterated. “I received a copy, first thing this morning as Jitendra’s attorney of record. The family claims to have a legitimate copy of Jitendra’s last will and testament that supersedes anything we may have in our possession. They’ve petitioned the court to freeze all of Jitendra’s assets and to prevent the children from being taken out of the state for the next sixty days until they can make the necessary arrangements to travel to Seattle and adjudicate the will.”

“They certainly didn’t waste any time,” I responded

“Can they actually do that?” Henry asked.

“They can, but it’s complicated,” Winston replied. “Since the children live in Seattle and Pegasus is chartered here, ordinarily they would have to go through the local courts, but as foreign nationals, they’re barred from doing so. If instead, they were permanent residents of the U.S., the Supreme Court has ruled that the local courts have jurisdiction, but otherwise the local courts are barred from handling cases brought by citizens of another country. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, indeed, has jurisdiction here. Of course, the litigants have to hire an American attorney to go through the American courts, and the family has done so, hiring Ronald Clarkson of Clarkson, Williams and Johnson, a firm that specializes in international law.

“Ron is one of the founding partners and a true heavy hitter. I’ve never faced him in court, nor would I feel qualified to do so, but I did have the opportunity to hear him speak in front of the bar association. We’re going to need to hire someone who’s his equal.”

“Have you seen the purported new will?” I asked.

Shaking his head, Winston answered, “I haven’t, nor does the family even have to reveal its contents in filing their injunction. They need only show that they have an abiding interest and that there’s a risk that harm could be done to them if the courts fail to intervene.”

“That’s a fucking low bar!” Henry exclaimed. “The mere act of freezing Jitendra’s assets would cause a run on Pegasus stock, and the share price would plummet overnight. Hell, just in filing the injunction, they could do irrevocable harm to the company. Don’t the stockholders have any say in this?”

“It could be a disaster all around,” Winston agreed, “but I’m not the right person to ask. I’m Jitendra’s personal attorney. Pegasus has a whole cadre of corporate attorneys who’d be in a much better position to respond.”

I asked, “Do we know when the court will hear the petition?”

“The District Court is overburdened and understaffed. There are supposed to be seven judges but there are five vacancies owing to the politics in Washington – D.C., that is.”

“There are only two judges?” I asked in disbelief.

“There’s a staff of quite a few clerks who actually take care of most matters of the court, but they aren’t presidential appointees, and they can only make recommendations for decisions. The two judges are both Bush appointees, by the way, and known as being pro-business. They’re likely to put corporate interests first. As to when they’ll hear the case, it depends on the staff review of the petition. The petition could be put before a judge as early as this afternoon if the staff deems the need critical. Otherwise, they might not rule on it until after the funeral – or months from now. I’m going to go down there when I get done here, but I’ll be notified in any case.”

Pausing for just a minute to catch my breath, I said, “I need to talk to my pop. He’s a Federal District Court judge, and his background is in corporate law. No one’s better qualified to give us advice. And I’m sure he’ll know of someone good to represent our interests. I’ll send him a text right now.” I started tapping away on my smartphone. “He’ll likely be in court, but he’ll call a recess if I tell him it’s a true emergency.”

After sending the text, I said, “We need to notify the directors of Pegasus of what’s going on, and they’ll probably want to convene right away, by Zoom if necessary. Is there a designated board chair?”

Clearing his throat, Winston replied, “That would be you, Dr. Jeffries. Would you like for me to set something up?”

“Please,” I responded.

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Scarcely five minutes had passed after I sent my text before Pop called me back. “I know you wouldn’t call me out of court unless you had a true emergency,” he began without even a greeting. “What gives?”

“Jitendra’s family in India have submitted a petition to the U.S. District Court over Western Washington. They’re requesting an emergency injunction to freeze Jitendra’s assets and to keep the children from being taken out of Washington State. They’re asking for sixty days, to give them time to come to the U.S., and they claim to have a copy of the last legitimate will.”

“Well, that certainly pushes the timetable up a bit, doesn’t it? Suffice to say, Pegasus can’t afford to have sixty percent of its stock frozen for even one day, let alone sixty, but even so, sixty days isn’t much time to put together a case. But it wouldn’t be sixty percent, would it? The family’s probably well aware of the 20-20-20 split among father and children – otherwise, they wouldn’t give a hoot about the kids – but the courts would never agree to freeze the children’s shares of Pegasus stock, even if the family asked them to do so. Technically, those aren’t a part of Jitendra’s assets.

“Should I assume you haven’t actually seen the will the family is passing off as the legitimate one?”

“No one on this side of the planet has,” I related.

“No surprise there, nor will we even get a chance to see their original copy until we see them in court. Nevertheless, I think we can assume we know what’s in it. Do you know who’s representing the family?”

“Someone named Ron Clarkson,” I replied.

“I know Ron. He’s argued a few cases before me. He’s good. Very good. You’re going to need a heavy hitter to represent you, and that someone should probably be me, but as a member of the Federal bench, I can’t. That said, I’ve trained some of the best, and one of my former students, who went on to clerk for me during my first year on the bench, practices in Seattle. I’ve already spoken to him a bit about your case, and he’ll drop everything to represent you. He’s young, but he knows the law better than I do, and that’s saying a lot, if I do say so myself. He’s only a little bit older than you, though, but like you, he knows how to use his youth to his advantage. People don’t expect someone so young to outmaneuver them.

“He’s actually someone you know, or rather used to know, so you need to decide if that will be a problem. His name is Shaun Cole, and he’s one of the most brilliant attorneys I’ve ever trained.”

My heart beat faster as I replied, “Shaun Cole? My former boyfriend, Shaun Cole?”

“You must understand, J.J., that he swore me to secrecy,” Pop replied. “Otherwise, I'd have told you long ago. He did his undergrad work at Stanford in computer science, of all things, and went on to get his M.B.A. before deciding to pursue a career in law. He moved to New York because of our accelerated degree program and our reputation, not to mention his interest specifically in training under me in corporate law. It wasn’t until he saw your picture on my desk that he made the connection. You can imagine that it was quite a shock for both of us. Of course I wanted to tell you, but he didn’t want your past relationship getting in the way of his studies. It was his decision to make.

“In any case, he met his husband while working as an associate at one of the meat grinders in New York. To make a long story short, they left the firm, along with a female associate, and formed their own law practice in Seattle, Shaun’s boyhood hometown. They quickly made names for themselves by winning some prominent, seemingly hopeless cases, and then Shaun took a case that ultimately went all the way to the Supreme Court. He built a reputation and argued numerous cases before the District Courts and now does that sort of work exclusively. Their firm has grown rapidly, too, with more than a dozen associates and a few junior partners working under the three original senior partners. His husband is the family-law attorney I recommend to you this morning.”

“Shaun must be, what, 32 now?” I related as I shook my head. “A senior partner in a prestigious law firm, who argues cases in Federal court and has argued cases before the Supreme Court – and all that by the age of 32. I have no problem with Shaun representing us, but we parted under somewhat adversarial conditions. He blamed me for the death of his father.”

“Yes, he told me about that, as had you previously,” Pop elaborated. “He doesn’t blame you at all now and, in fact, blames the accident that killed his father on his father’s own arrogance. It’s a lesson he’s taken to heart. He’s one of the most unassuming people I’ve met, yet no one argues their cases more forcefully in court.”